THQ: Red Faction: Battlegrounds' Reception a "Disappointment" - News
by VGChartz Staff , posted on 17 April 2011 / 2,645 Views
First, THQ complains about Homefront's scores ("You can't apply math to art."). Then they reference their Metacritic scores to point out how awesome they are as a studio, and how they think that, by releasing games with higher review averages, they can be even better. During a recent event promoting SyFy's upcoming Red Faction: Origins made-for-TV tie-in movie, THQ's Lenny Brown has brought up Metacritic once again, this time in regards to Red Faction: Battlegrounds' terrible 49 out of 100 average. Simply: "It's a bit of a disappointment."
He explained:
"I think what's most disappointing for me is how sometimes the prose of the reviews don't match the final score. Someone will say something not necessarily glowing, but you think you're tracking along a 7, and then you get a 4.
"That's not talking about the fairness of the score of this game in particular. It's not the best game in the world, but it's not a 5. It's a satisfactory experience that leads into the bigger game. And I think just because of what we're trying to do, that's innovative, and I think that alone deserves a 7."
First, that's not really that innovative - Dead Rising 2 had similar pre-game experiences, and those were crazy fun. Second, while innovation is important, it's not enough to guarantee a 7/10 score when basic game mechanics are butchered and wholly un-fun. Interestingly, as someone with a background in film, Brown was also able to offer his unique perspecive on game vs. movie reviews:
"I think what's really disappointing is that coming from the film business, Metacritic has no bearing - Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes, they don't really affect studio prices or gross at the box office. It really affects [the video game] industry in a weird way."
Now that is true. However, it would be hard to tell if games sell poorly based solely on negative reviews, or if they sell poorly just because they are shoddy games.
Brown couldn't or wouldn't share sales information, but he did explain that one possible explanation for the low scores was that THQ didn't do a good job at explaining exactly what Battlegrounds was:
"When you have five minutes for an instance-based gameplay session, that's [Battlegrounds]. And when you want to spend two hours in the Red Faction universe, that's [the larger games] on the console. I think we've got to do a better job of messaging that, to the consumer and to the game press."
All I hear is, "You're playing it wrong." Personally, I don't think that not enjoying a game is the gamer's fault. Maybe I'm just crazy, though.
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Red Faction is a horrible game. I played the trial on XBLA and i was WTF?
I liked Red Faction Guerilla, and i will be buying Red Faction Armageddon, but this one is an awful game, it has nothing to do with Red Faction except the name, it´s a MP car shooting game.
lol the game is that bad sony gave it away free on their ps plus service, yes it really is that bad.
Thq should be bought out or go under their games have bad scores for a few years now
JUST DON'T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT REVIEW SCORES.
AND STOP TRYING TO MAKE GAMES FOR PEOPLE WHO DO.
THEY ARE IMPOSSIBLE TO PLEASE.
THQ: you must learn like EA and Activison that you must pay for your scores duh?. IGN, gamespot, eurogamer etc they all have there price. So next time in your advertising budget set aside the "bribing" money for those reviewers.
it might have worked if they didnt brand it as a red faction title. Tbh, I think youll be making another one of these threads in a few months time when Armageddon releases. Guerrilla was good but that game doesnt look very promising.
homefront is a good game, but i knew this red faction crap was going to fail. its like 1v1 vehicle failitude... red faction guerrilla was pretty good but never did i say " wow it be cool to be in a arena and fight other mechs"
