Jeff Gerstmann was indeed fired from Gamespot because of a poor score

[Zim]

I have to say even though I think games journalism is an utter joke it seems some people are reading this article and coming to the opposite conclusion of what it says.

The tone of the article is basically that many companies try and force high reviews but that in the cases listed it didn't work. I'm not sure people understand how the sites work. There are different departments and the pressure form companies will be put on one department, then that department will try and put pressure on another. However clearly it doesn't always work.

The Kane and Lynch review wasn't very positive despite the pressure. Likewise Sony trying to force high reviews clearly didn't work as R+C got 7.5, not the near perfect score they wanted.

However there are definitely some ridiculous cases. IGN's Mass Effect 3 review I think is pretty fair listing negatives and positives. Even though they gave a score the game (I feel) deserves it doesn't change the fact that having one of your employees in the game is a joke. They should have told her she was unallowed to take the offer. That's even ignoring the fact it's a person who got a job in games journalism by licking a freaking psp -_- oh the high standards. Or that someone with no voice acting history or even acting history performs some of the worst voice acting ever and replaces a character that actually had an interesting history with Shepherd.

Likewise there is a huge problem with giving reviews to people who simply shouldn't have a job in the industry. For example Greg Miller at ign. A self confessed Playstation fanboy. He gets a review for Uncharted 3 and gives it.... a perfect 10 in literally every single category....come on now, literally perfect in every single way and apparently the best lasting appeal of any game ever made. A two page review that doesn't mention a single negative and reads like a joke. They then give this same person a timed 360 exclusive to review.... Is that a good idea? Seemingly not as he gives it a 4.5 and the entire review barely contains a single positive OH! and features references to a Uncharted.... hmmm

So many other examples. I remember when Gamespot reviewed sacred 2 and the developers came out and pointed out that their account had only played the game for a few hours. Or the review they put up for Metroid Prime Hunters where there were mistakes that showed the reviewer hadn't even really played the game.

Joystiq's ''review'' of Nier where Justin gave the game a zero and refused to review it. Why you might ask? Because he said a quest was impossible and the game design sucked. He had to catch a fish and it was impossible after hours of trying. Then vast amounts of people pointed that the entire time in the video he put up there was a HUGE red X on the map, that through the entire game had been used to mark where you need to go for quests. Can you figure out what was wrong? He was in the total wrong place and had ignored the quest marker. However he said that didn't count and because the fishing spot was near to where he got the quest that it made more sense to fish there than where the freaking quest marker was........ *sigh*