No, this review wasn't influenced by a large corporation at ALL.

Today, in my apparently new segment of video game publishers/developers behaving badly (see yesterday’s article about EA’s cringe-worthy “Sin to Win” campaign), we get to look at Eidos and their latest slap in the face to gamers.  GamesMaster magazine in the UK is the first publication to publish a review of Batman: Arkham Asylum months prior to release.  The review does all but call the game the savior of mankind, and there’s a pretty good chance that Eidos is again behind all of it with their restrictive game review embargoes.

Eidos does not have a good track record when it comes to game scores.  They have a real problem with people who don’t like their games, as would anyone, I imagine.  You put several years and millions of dollars of man hours of development into crafting a single delicate gem, there has to be a part of you that dies inside when the critics get a hold of it and wipe their collective asses with it.

Enter Eidos.  The word that keeps coming back into my head as I’m writing this is “corruption”.  While there obviously has to be some behind-the-scenes tweaking of scores between mainsteam media outlets and game developers, Eidos just keeps getting caught going one or two steps beyond that unspoken line of accepted behavior.  And when millions of dollars are at stake between giant corporations, the stakes are that much higher.

Many people (this writer included) felt that Eidos was instrumental in Jeff Gerstmann’s mysteriously-timed firing over at Gamespot for his blasting of Kane and Lynch after Eidos launched a media campaign at their site (Woof: watch the brutalizing here).  Then, late last year, Eidos held a review embargo for review scores under 80% for Tomb Raider: Underworld, trotting their public relations guy out to say that, yes, they were in fact trying to manipulate the metacritic scores prior to the release of the game.  Umm…hey, you’re not supposed to tell us that.

Smash cut to now.  Last month, Eidos claimed that they were again putting out an embargo on negative review scores for Batman: Arkham Asylum.  They then placed a loophole in the embargo, claiming that you could release a review of the game early if the following two conditions were met:

1)      The cover (magazine) would have to be dedicated to the game
2)      The score had to be over 90%

And we’ve got a winner!  The first game magazine to cross the picket line and look as if they are in Eidos’ back pocket is Games Masters UK magazine, for their unabashed review of Arkham Asylum!   They gave the game a 96%, all but calling the game the key to solving the Israel/Palestine argument.  According to the Games Master UK review, Arkham Asylum is “Not only the best Batman game ever, but one of the finest adventures of its generation.”

Oh, there were negative things about the game, and the reviewer was quick to point them out!  In the love/hate section, the critic hated “that it has to end” in the first bullet point, and “waiting for the inevitable sequel” in the second bullet point.  They were mad that the game was too short!  Oh, I want more of it!  It’s so good nom-nom-nom!  And how long until a sequel?  Oooh, there’s a negative!  We have to wait for a sequel of this game!  They might as well have added that they wished for a brain erasing device so they could go back through and enjoy the majesty of the game “for the first time” again.

And again, just like the EA ad campaigns that keep hedging on lawsuit territory, these guys win for getting the negative publicity for their ridiculously over-the-top review.  I mean, let’s face it, prior to this little controversy, I’d never heard of the publication as I imagine most of you hadn’t either.  Is there a big following over there in the UK?

All I know is that for all the publicity this magazine is getting over this review, imagine the shitstorm these guys are going to be in if this game hits the mainstream press and is short of perfect. I’m hoping that the game is great and I’ve been hoping so since I saw the first screenshots.  The game sounds great…but then so did Kane and Lynch.

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