GameSpot thread re purposed. See the bottom post.


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After the much-publicized departure of editorial director Jeff Gerstmann, GameSpot' s parent company, CNet, has named its new editor-in-chief: Ricardo Torres, who has been with the site since 2001. " I' m eager to continue the site' s tradition of excellence" Torres said in response to the promotion, " and I' m confident we can move forward into 2008 and set a new industry standard for how video games are covered."

As editor-in-chief, CNet says that Torres " will oversee GameSpot' s award-winning editorial staff in their coverage of the latest games and breaking news." What it doesn' t mention is that he will also take on the responsibility of repairing GameSpot' s shattered image. GameSpot' s editorial section has been in a state of disarray since the Gerstmann incident, in which rumors suggest that the former editorial director was fired due to advertiser pressure. After his departure, several staff members (including Alex Navarro and Frank Provo) left the publication in protest.

This whole GameSpot fiasco has totally turned me off to the site, and all of their partner sites, and is just one more reason why I refuse to give them another hit.

The last thing I want to see is good people getting screwed because corporate America' s infiltrated the gaming news industry.

Ricardo and Alex were my favorites at GameSpot, great to hear that one is getting a more active role but sucks to hear that the other left the company.

Did you actually see the review he got fired for? I heard it was just a plain bad job on the review and that is why he got fired, not because he gave it a bad number. I don' t like gamespot though.

He was pretty acid about Kane and Lynch, but he wrote the truth, that the game is a flawed and a disappointment, but that the potential was there. He did mention he didn' t like the story, and lets face it, even if a reviewer gave a 9 to a Final Fantasy, it doesn' t mean that he had to enjoy the story and he also looked down upon the f-bombs coming from left and right, which is something most US reviewers actually complain about (Yakuza had similar complains due to the language).

In all truth, he was being Jeff. This wasn' t the first game he was harsh and outspoken on, it just turns out that this one was giving the big bucks on the ad campaign, and the Eidos people just didn' t like it. But I guess we' ll never know the truth.

I rarely look at Gamespot anyhow. I think I dislike the layout for some reason lol. I do like reading their rumor mill section, but then again most of that stuff can be found out earlier elsewhere.

It beats out IGN' s layout. I can' t stand theirs.

Did you actually see the review he got fired for? I heard it was just a plain bad job on the review and that is why he got fired, not because he gave it a bad number. I don' t like gamespot though.

He wasn' t fired for the quality of the article. Take a look for yourself and see what they cut out. The bold' s what they cut, the standard print is what was found in the updated version. On occasion, the updated version actually dumbs down certain words... when they cut out " (swearing) like that just make(s) the game feel purposely abrasive, and not in a " gritty" or " cool" sort of way." with " that' s just lame" ... it wasn' t for his writing mechanics, that' s for sure.

Gamespot' s Kane & Lynch Review
By Jeff Gerstmann

Kane & Lynch: Dead Men has a lot of promise, but nothing in this game works out nearly as well as you' d hope.

[Removed from original: Kane & Lynch: Dead Men is an ugly game, and we' re not necessarily talking about the graphics. This criminal tale is packed with a collection of completely unlikable characters with no redeeming value whatsoever. It' s impossible to even root for them as antiheroes. Once you get past the messy, meaningless story, things don' t get too much better because you' re saddled with clunky artificial intelligence on the part of your allies and your enemies, as well as a core shooting mechanic that simply doesn' t satisfy. The unfortunate part is that the game does have a few bright points and feels like it had a lot of potential that just didn' t come together as well as anyone must have hoped.]

[Added in edits: Io Interactive is best known for its stealth-focused Hitman series, but there' s nothing quiet and sneaky about its latest release, Kane & Lynch: Dead Men. This time around, the developer put together a crime-themed shooter that starts out with a couple of simple, heist-like objectives and then rapidly spins out of control until, without much warning, you' re gunning down soldiers in the middle of a foreign revolution. While the journey sounds interesting at first, and has a few bright points, it' s weighed down by bad storytelling, a real lack of character development, and a host of gameplay-related issues. The end result is a game that squanders much of its potential and just doesn' t come together as well as it probably should have.]

The story mode opens with you in the role of Kane, a death row inmate on his way to his execution, apparently convicted of being a very savage criminal as part of a notorious gang called The7. You' re on your last ride with a quirky guy named Lynch who tells you to cover your head. After an explosion, you' re both busted out and on the run. That might sound great, but it' s a fate worse than death. The surviving members of The7 have busted you out to force you to recover something they think you stole from them. They consider you a traitor and will kill Kane' s family if he doesn' t comply. Lynch is sent along for the ride to watch over Kane and report in if anything weird happens. Circumstances change over time and the back half plays out like a revenge tale, but it' s a revenge tale where you don' t actually care if anyone actually gets their revenge. Every single person you play as or encounter is despicable and wholly abrasive; thus, [it' s extremely difficult to care about anything that' s happening to them.] [it' ll probably be tough for you to find anyone to latch onto and care about, even if you typically go for this sort of crime drama on TV or in movies.] You can play through this story alone or with a friend in co-op mode, though this mode is only available locally and takes place on a vertically split screen that makes it difficult to follow the action, even on a widescreen TV.

The core gameplay in Kane & Lynch is your standard third-person shooter with cover elements and a light dusting of squad tactics. You can fire from the hip, but it' s somewhat more accurate to fire while aiming. Unfortunately, even when you' re aiming, hitting your targets is more difficult than it should be because your automatic fire has a wide spread on it. Kane is supposedly a badass arch-criminal; he should be able to hit his targets with short, controlled bursts. You' re able to get behind cover and either blindfire or pop out for aimed shots, but there' s no easy way to stick to walls. You don' t press a button or anything; instead you sort of get up against a wall and turn sideways. Then after jiggling the controls back and forth a bit, you' ll eventually snap into place to get behind cover. It' s such a pain that you' ll rarely want to use it, and it seems like you' re always snapping into cover behind something at the most inopportune times, making the game quite frustrating. There' s no health meter, but if you go down, you don' t die immediately either. You can be revived by one of your teammates with an adrenaline shot. If you get that shot too frequently, you' ll overdose and die. If your teammates don' t reach you in time, you' ll die too. Also, if one of the guys on your crew gets dropped, you have to make sure he gets revived. If he dies, the game ends. Between your poor accuracy, the enemy' s sharp accuracy, and the boneheaded AI from your squadmates, this all adds up to you keeping your squad on a very short leash.
When you' ve got a team with you, you can order team members around individually or order the team all at once by telling it to regroup to your location, move to a specific spot, or attack specific targets. Telling team members to move to locations is the most effective move because you can keep them close and revive them when they get shot down. Sending them after targets results in your squad running around aimlessly and trying to get too close to targets. That leads to them getting dropped in the line of fire, where you probably won' t be able to rescue them. So whether you' re doing the shooting yourself or hanging back and letting your men do the dirty work, the game is a real [letdown.] [disappointment, especially when you consider how well this same sort of stuff worked in the developer' s previous squad-based game, Freedom Fighters.]

There' s only one multiplayer mode in Kane & Lynch, and it' s a great idea. [Unfortunately, the idea doesn' t translate into a great or long-lasting experience.] It' s called Fragile Alliance and puts up to eight players in one team of criminals. Then, it sets the team off to steal money, cocaine, and jewels from various locations seen in the single-player game. So you might start out in front of a bank, run in, collect a bunch of cash, and then escape from in a van out back. The catch is the way the money is split up among teammates. If you all work together, the money is split evenly. But at any point, a player can go rogue and gun down one of his teammates. This brands you a traitor; thus, any money you collect and escape with is yours to keep. Of course, this also means that other players who are still part of the team will try to waste you before you escape with their hard-stolen loot. So every round is a tentative affair where you always expect the worst--you' re just never sure when someone' s going to finally turn on you. When you die, whether it' s from the AI that opposes you or another player, you respawn on the other side of the heist. Now you need to stop the heist by eliminating the other players and you earn money by collecting it before the criminals collect.

[It' s a great idea that' s] [It' s a bummer that the multiplayer is] mucked up by a few different things. First, you' re still playing Kane & Lynch, so all of the inaccurate firing issues and poor cover tactics from the single-player still apply. But another problem is that you can see the names of the other players over their heads from a distance and through walls, even if they' re on the other side. While you can run while crouched to make your name disappear, it' s pretty weak that you can see the names of the police team members as they head your way. There' s no element of surprise. Also, there are only a handful of different scenarios for this, and they play out the same way every single time. The security guards are always in the same positions in the bank and the cops are always waiting for you right outside, so it gets old fast.

[Technically,] [While it might seem like a basic heist game, Kane & Lynch does a good job of moving the action around, and you' ll see a variety of different environments and situations, ranging from banks, to prison breaks, to full-scale conflicts in the middle of illicit poppy fields. It also has some] good-looking player models, with Kane and Lynch both looking appropriate as over-the-hill criminals. And even though their faces don' t animate much in-game, they still look good. Most of the animation isn' t so hot, though, and you' ll see a few ugly textures here and there too. Some of it looks a bit unfinished, like the way you see guys go through the motion of hitting you with an adrenaline shot, but their hands are actually empty.

[The multiplayer mode is a really cool idea that leaves you wondering who' s going to turn traitor on you, but it isn' t strong enough to make you forget the game' s other problems.]

The soundtrack is probably the best part of the whole game, delivering some tense music when the game calls for it. There' s a lot of voice acting in the game. The voices are appropriate for the characters, but the dialogue is hokey and filled with [lazy] [gratuitous] cursing. The good ol' F word is certainly appropriate, given the nature of what these guys are doing, but when it' s every third word out of every character' s mouth, it comes across as a crutch that drags down the rest of the game a bit. Lynch frequently responds to your squad-orders by just shouting " F*** you!" [That' s just lame.] [Things like that just make the game feel purposely abrasive, and not in a " gritty" or " cool" sort of way.]

[The game is available on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 as of this writing, and the differences between the two versions are minimal. Both games have occasional frame rate issues and the control issues with finding cover and hitting targets are noticeable in both. The only real difference is that the PlayStation 3 version doesn' t seem to have voice chat support. The multiplayer mode only really clicks when you can talk things out with other players and try to convince them that you' re not going to turn traitor--only to turn traitor on them and then laugh about it. Without that, the whole experience feels a little dry. The Xbox 360 version also has the standard set of 1,000 achievement points, a few of which reward you for specific moments in co-op, like having the player controlling Lynch put a few cops out of their misery, rather than leaving them to writhe on the ground.]

Kane & Lynch: Dead Men is a premise with promise, [but the gameplay isn' t sound while the story and characters go nowhere. And it' s got enough random AI-based glitches to make you want to scream. Considering] [and if you' ve been waiting patiently for a game to really dive into the whole " crew-based heist tale" concept, you might be able to look past some of the story flaws. But when you consider] the nearly ridiculous number of extremely high-quality shooters available recently, there' s not much room for something like Kane & Lynch, [but] [even taking into account the somewhat unique nature of its story. That said,] the multiplayer is a smart idea that' s worth seeing, even if playing it makes you wish that it was used in another, better game.

[Editor' s Note: This review has been updated to include differences between the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions and a clarification on the game' s multiplayer mode.]

too much too read. Wasn' t it a video interveiw he got fired for.

That won' t save them, besides this dude gave Shenmue II on Xbox a lousy score, I don' t care.

too much too read. Wasn' t it a video interveiw he got fired for.

Dude, just read the bold. That' s what got cut out in the second interview.

Some of it might have been for content, but look at the good majority of it. It' s because it' s too negative of Kane & Lynch... a game that really deserves some negativity.

The video reviews on gamespot are the exact same thing as the written ones. I am inclined to say they just read their own reviews from the screen into the camera.

Ryan Davis - 8 Year Gamespot Veteran Leaves in Wake of Gerstmann Controversy

Wow, Jeff Gerstmann, Greg Kasavin, Rich Gallup, Alex Navarro and Ryan Davis. That' s like... everybody... ever... as far as GameSpot is concerned

They were certainly the only ones I knew by name, or went out of my way to read.

The comments in the article bring up an interesting point. It wouldn' t be too far fetched to see these ex-Gamespot employees banding together somewhere else and continuing to be productive members of the industry.

Wow, Jeff Gerstmann, Greg Kasavin, Rich Gallup, Alex Navarro and Ryan Davis. That' s like... everybody... ever... as far as GameSpot is concerned

Yeah, they now got people like Kevin Vanord and Aaron Thomas, who know as much about vide games as my 5 year old cousin.

ORIGINAL: Eddie_the_Hated

They were certainly the only ones I knew by name, or went out of my way to read.

The comments in the article bring up an interesting point. It wouldn' t be too far fetched to see these ex-Gamespot employees banding together somewhere else and continuing to be productive members of the industry.

With internet it is possible.

ORIGINAL: Nitro

Wow, Jeff Gerstmann, Greg Kasavin, Rich Gallup, Alex Navarro and Ryan Davis. That' s like... everybody... ever... as far as GameSpot is concerned

Hm, Rich, Alex and Ryan too? I didn' t know that. That' s a lot of familiar names at once. I guess it' s kind of harsh for all these new people to review now. Considering the remarks from visitors etc :P

Greg of course left because he wanted to pursue other things within the gaming industry. But who knows, maybe he saw some problems coming within the company already then.

Who cares about reviews, typicaly i can tell if a game is good after 5 seconds of gameplay footage.

It' s not about the reviews themselves Silent. The only reason I consider it remotely newsworthy is because of the righteous backlash Gamespot has received after they tried to make a move that can, and does go virtually unnoticed in any other major industry.

In the long run it won' t financially matter that 8 people left Gamespot. Cnet will find other employees, greener ones more willing to take shit, and submit to those in a position of authority. It' s the sociological implications behind it.

Wow, Jeff Gerstmann, Greg Kasavin, Rich Gallup, Alex Navarro and Ryan Davis. That' s like... everybody... ever... as far as GameSpot is concerned

WOW, all of those people gone? Oh well, they might as well rename the site cause those guys were the embodiment of GameSpot. I know about Kasavin and Gerstmann, just found out about Ryan Davis and Rich Gallup. Oh well, theres goes those On The Spot video segments.

ORIGINAL: Terry Bogard

WOW, all of those people gone? Oh well, they might as well rename the site cause those guys were the embodiment of GameSpot.

When i think about Gamespot, i think about those guys.