Confirmed: Sega are not issuing review codes for Sonic Forces

[Tracker_TD]

SEGA Japan's handling of review code is likely to be different, cuz different branches. 

Famitsu's next issue only lands on Forces' release date, so they likely let em do it early a la Odyssey in EDGE.

[Dr. Egguman]

 

16 minutes ago, PC the Hedgehog said:

Famitsu review scores are out, and Sonic Forces has been reviewed.

So, uh, what exactly is happening here?

I'm surprised. I want this game to have good reviews, but at same time, don't. What I see if good reviews appears is Sonic Team thinking this is the type of "the perfect Sonic game". DEAR GOD, no.

[Detective Kaito]

This whole situation is getting exciting, and not in a good way.

The days after the release of Sonic Forces will be...very difficult for Sonic fans.

[Dr. Mechano]

16 hours ago, SpongicX said:

Keep in mind that Sonic Mania was a classic styled Sonic game, of course IGN will praise the Hell out of it. Even if it was bad, they probably  would have found an excuse to praise it for not being a 3d Sonic game. Too many review sites seem horribly biased against 3d Sonic games, to the point of even trashing decent ones like Sonic Generations. 

I mean, the classic games get praised for a reason: They're good.

[Eternal EX]

Wait did Famitsu just rank Sonic Forces up there with Assassin's Creed Origins? A game that scored a 9 across the board vs THIS?

[DoubleXXCross]

You can more accurately describe Famitsu's review scale as 30/40 to 40/40. They're the actual epitome of "7 is average", partly because their scores are combined from four reviewers who gave a single number value each. Said reviewers are also a half-random selection for each game, so there's no consistency in how the reviews are scored.

[Rummy]

Ever slowly i regret my pre-order, also the fact i won a copy of the game thanks to mcdonalds doesn't help my case any further.

[Badnik Mechanic]

1 minute ago, Rummy said:

Ever slowly i regret my pre-order, also the fact i won a copy of the game thanks to mcdonalds doesn't help my case any further.

Why can't you cancel it?

[Rummy]

1 minute ago, Mayor D said:

Why can't you cancel it?

Steam.

[Baconjack]

Yeah, even though this game gets 1 good review so far, I'm still going to wait and see the next few that come out.

[Badnik Mechanic]

1 minute ago, Rummy said:

Steam.

Wait I thought you could request a refund since you've had 0 hours of playtime on it and not downloaded it yet?

Edit: you can request a refund.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=6345-QIDX-7244

[Rummy]

Just now, Mayor D said:

Wait I thought you could request a refund since you've had 0 hours of playtime on it and not downloaded it yet?

I pre-ordered it weeks ago and by now it's not refundable from what i've known, Whatever the case i bought it and i might as well live with it for another day.

[DoubleXXCross]

1 hour ago, SaberX said:

But 3 of them gave like...9 for the game. 3 reviewers gave like a high score for the game, which for me sounds really hard to buy. This is even more strange than inconsistency...either their standarts are higly different(or nuts) or they were paid for that.

 

Hey, Fire and Ice got one point less and Lost World got one point more.

The key is, these aren't professional reviewers. These are two people who play the genre and two people who don't, and other than that they're entirely random people. So basically it's four people who all have wildly different scales of quality, not just to each other in the same review, but also to the random four people sampled for each and every other review. So none of the scores between games mean anything to one another.

And that's how Sonic Mania can have the lowest score of all the games we just mentioned.

[superman43]

26 minutes ago, DoubleXXCross said:

Hey, Fire and Ice got one point less and Lost World got one point more.

The key is, these aren't professional reviewers. These are two people who play the genre and two people who don't, and other than that they're entirely random people. So basically it's four people who all have wildly different scales of quality, not just to each other in the same review, but also to the random four people sampled for each and every other review. So none of the scores between games mean anything to one another.

And that's how Sonic Mania can have the lowest score of all the games we just mentioned.

If that´s the case then Forces actually could have: 7,8,10,10 and Mania 9,9,7,7 or so... wow that´re pretty irrelevant points.

[superman43]

17 minutes ago, SaberX said:

Thats what I had in mind yeah. The degree of scores would vary a lot from one to another.

Yes I think that the two people not playing the genre preferred the boost2win levels and the cutscene-QTE gameplay. Actually who won´t if they never played a real 2D/3D platformer ? With Mania same, but the opposite. Who will like 2D platformer if he never played any? Or thinks it is outdated?

[Badnik Mechanic]

Just had word from someone trustworthy, up to them if they wanna disclose their ID.

Review codes are not going out until launch day, at least for the US. EU is unknown and as we saw today Asia is anyones guess.

[Badnik Mechanic]

Not related to my last/merged post  Destructoids review editor confirms no codes until game releases.

https://www.destructoid.com/sega-won-t-be-sending-out-sonic-forces-review-codes-before-release-470219.phtml

[Mad Convoy]

2 hours ago, DoubleXXCross said:

Hey, Fire and Ice got one point less and Lost World got one point more.

The key is, these aren't professional reviewers. These are two people who play the genre and two people who don't, and other than that they're entirely random people. So basically it's four people who all have wildly different scales of quality, not just to each other in the same review, but also to the random four people sampled for each and every other review. So none of the scores between games mean anything to one another.

And that's how Sonic Mania can have the lowest score of all the games we just mentioned.

I don't see why its necessarily a bad thing to let people inexperienced with the genre review a video game? Especially when there are multiple reviewers, two of which are fans of the genre. If a game is to get high marks, then it should be able to appeal to genre fans and non-fans alike, otherwise the game has overly limited appeal (which is a valid thing to try to warn people about and deduct points for).

And if they got to review for a professional magazine, then they are professionals. The basic definition of professional is somebody who gets paid to do a task as opposed to doing it as a hobby. Most professional game reviewers either got into it because they like money or because they're gamers themselves, usually the latter.

Not sure here but you're kind of implying that Famitsu uses 8 reviewers when it uses 4????? Unless you're simultaneously saying that the reviewers are chosen entirely at random and also picked from a pool of two genre fan reviewers and two genre non-fan reviewers (which doesn't really make sense???? I am not insulting you, I honestly do not know what you mean). Actually, reviewers are assigned to games they aren't interested in all the time and sometimes just because you have a bit of time left for your bosses to squeeze in another review. Famitsu isn't the first and won't be the last for a magazine to have wildly inconsistent quality scales. One GI reviewer rated Sonic Generations lower than the Sonic 06 rating given from another reviewer. Three different people rated Unleashed on IGN and each person had a completely different perspective on the game. Metacritic is one of the most trusted gaming review websites on the web, a game's Metascore often treated as the end-all be-all of its quality-- and it sources all kinds of reviews with wildly different standards and even different systems that are hard to compare.

I'm not saying don't use Famitsu or Metacritic or whatever. I just think its mistaken to look at averages as anything but a first impression. The important part is the part where Forces got 9/9/9/8 scores from four reviewers thus far-- making the mode of the four scores 9 (which is more accurate considering that the 8 is an outlier in this set). What's even more important than that is the actual content of the reviews. Even then, only treat reviews as a good way of getting a general idea. They are not the end all be all. I can see where the attitude came from-- in the days before the internet and post-Atari, game reviews in magazines used to be the only way of getting honest information about games before and after they came out to decide if they were worth purchasing. But that's not the case anymore and I think a lot of gamers' relationship with reviewers need to be re-evaluated, especially since the consequences of a game not getting the desired score can be flame-y on a scale I don't see with movies, TV shows, etc. that face a similar lack of desired score.

Actually, I would be curious what the mode score of each Sonic game is. For the less divisive titles it might be more accurate than the average. This is the kind of thing Metacritic is good for so I might get a bunch of numbers from there and check it out.

------

Anyway, yeah really not happy Sega is withholding review copies for a day-one patch. Especially in light of SoJ actually having the decency of providing such, unlike SoA and possibly SoE. To be a fly on the wall at Sega...

[Dejimon11]

Here's there reasoning for that

 

[RK64]

From experience, SEGA hates giving out review copies for Sonic titles. I asked for Boom: Fire and Ice when writing for 3WIREL and they never sent me a copy, despite repeatedly asking Arron and SEGA's PR people. Arron responded, later on, saying no review copies were left, but I felt annoyed regardless. So this isn't shocking. They hate giving out review copies for Sonic titles or at the very least, SEGA's PR is mainly focused on Atlus and non-Sonic Team related games. 

[Badnik Mechanic]

Just now, RK64 said:

 I asked for Boom: Fire and Ice

You have Nintendo to thank for that. Nintendo acted as distributor for that title in a lot of places and review code requests went through them.

Took us a long time to get a code for that one too.

 

Also just read Segas tweet... I'm... I'm just speechless. 

[RK64]

4 minutes ago, Mayor D said:

You have Nintendo to thank for that. Nintendo acted as distributor for that title in a lot of places and review code requests went through them.

Took us a long time to get a code for that one too.

 

Also just read Segas tweet... I'm... I'm just speechless. 

Really? Huh... That makes sense. 

And... I read that tweet too. What the f***? You are really holding things back due to a day-one patch? People PLAYED through the entire game and I saw no issues with what I watched. Sigh....

Edit: Has to do with the story I think. The Shadow DLC might answer questions/plot holes the main-game didn't cover. 

[Blue Wisp]

Sonic Forces is the gift that keeps on giving god damn. I love it.

[Dr. Egguman]

Ew, I don't think Super Sonic and some changes at the stages/boss battle gonna save the game. 

[Nicky Nicardo]

I'm glad that the official Sonic Twitter clarified things, and I understand their reasoning.