Early reviews of the forthcoming Gran Turismo for PSP are not kind, which can’t be music to the ears of Sony, who is hoping the franchise will breath life into PSP sales. Not all reviews are bad, but the good one comes from what I call “shill-sites”, i.e., game websites who love just about everything so they can keep getting free swag and better relations with PR firms. It’s the big boys who are hating on Gran Turismo, sites like CVG, Eurogamer and IGN.

Eurogamer says:

‘relying on players to make their own fun is either lazy or foolhardy. Coupled with archaic AI and the isolating absence of PlayStation Network support, this makes for a game that feels unfocused and regressive, despite its considerable technical and mechanical accomplishments.’

IGN says:

‘For a lot of other Gran Turismo fans, the fantastic driving is coupled with starting out at the bottom, slowly tweaking and upgrading your starter car as you compete in event after event, and gradually buying new rides to take on bigger and better challenges. And then eventually, after lots of hard work, you’ll get a car that can crack the 200mph barrier and you’ll feel like you’ve accomplished something great. Gran Turismo on the PSP contains none of this, and by and large, that’s the entire problem.’

CVG says:

Superb car handling is the only redeeming factor for GT PSP. It feels great to drive. But that driving needed to be packaged with an actual racing game and that game isn’t here.

Media outlets have a new reason to fear the ire of angry Nintendo fanboys, and this time it’s not related to Mario, Zelda, or any other Nintendo properties.  Rather, the problem stems from certain inaccuracies, or shall we say, disagreements that gaming publication GamePro posted in its recent review of the Wii’s blockbuster FPS title, The Conduit.  And it essentially has little to do with the score.

Many of the most reputable review sites and publications scored the game around the 80 percent range – we scored it at 8.5, IGN gave it an 8.6, Nintendo Power and GamesRadar gave it an 8 – and GamePro actually followed fairly closely giving it 3 1/2 stars out of 5.

So what was the problem?  Aside from admittedly reviewing the game without even touching the online multiplayer mode – a feature which garnered the most praise from the gaming press – GamePro criticized The Conduit for “terrible motion controls” and “unimpressive graphics,” two features that other gaming publication lauded.  For instance, G4, which scored the game lower overall than GamePro at 3 out of 5 stars, still praised it for “engaging, responsive controls” and “slick visual effects.”
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I’m shocked…SHOCKED! that ‘game journalism’ is being called out for a lack of integrity.

Eurogamer is under attack from the developers of recently released MMO Darkfall, insisting that the final score of 2/10 is completely erroneous. Their proof? They examined the server logs of the two accounts the devs gave the magazine for reviewing purposes and determined the critic played the game for only two hours.

From Darkfall Forum:

When we read the hostile review by Ed Zitron, one thing became apparent: he had not played the game at all. Eurogamer readers and Darkfall players are posting bullet lists of factual errors in the story. The reviewer hadn’t even figured out the very basics of the game before he wrote about it. We checked the logs for the 2 accounts we gave Eurogamer and we found that one of them had around 3 minutes playtime, and the other had less than 2 hours spread out in 13 sessions. read more…