Personally, though, I think they'd be better off ironing out all the kinks and making the original release the best it can be. All these game issues can really harm a developer's/publisher's reputation. Makes 'em seem like they don't really care about quality. Which could drive away potential customers and repeat customers.

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I keep imagining if a AAA title like a bullshit macho shooter like GoW2 or R2 had been in this situation... maybe I'm wrong, but I think retraction of the review would have been in the header for at least a solid month or at least not rolled out under the cover of darkness. CERTAINLY Not just saying 'whoops, better now!'

And I'm not saying pretend the problems never existed, but credit where credit's due.

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The gaming press is allowed to do things like this ("roll it out under the cover of darkness", as you unfairly put it), because the fact is that there's an expectation for a game to ship with working code, and the gaming press generally reviews a game based on what ships. Some exceptions are made for online games when the makers of the game are still sorting out server issues, but that's about it. While I think game review structure might change in the future given how many more games have patch support now, you can't expect reviewers to keep an eye on every game they've ever reviewed in case a patch comes out that vastly improves the game.

If a big AAA title shipped with terrible controls (see: Lair), even if they patch it, very few gaming sites are likely to retract a review (let alone put it in the header for a month). In life, there's these things called "deadlines", and they're the time you're supposed to have things done by.

If you hand in a homework assignment a day late, it's perfectly reasonable for the teacher to penalize you some percentage.

If a game doesn't work when first released, it's perfectly reasonable for a reviewer to lower the score because of it. If a patch fix comes, they should update their readers on it, but they are not at all obligated to change their review. Sorry, developer, you missed your chance.

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But i feel like things like GTA4's fix on the PC got A lot more focus than this did. And I still think that a lot of AAA titles got a lot more credit for fixing problems than the new Katamari game did

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Like with the whole "i am rich" debacle.

I think developers having bad word of mouth and crappy sales for crashy games is punishment enough for now.

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I picked this up, and honestly, I like it. Nothing the review says is wrong per-se, but something just feels right about this game. I didn't find the controls particularly cumbersome, it actually seemed like the tilt control makes more sense for Katamari (enough to make me wonder why we haven't seen a Wii release, since the graphical issues would be negligible). Yeah, the frame rate sucks, and yeah, the upgrading slows to zero, but it's still fun. Could it be better? Yeah, and I hope Namco fixes some of these issues. Do i regret spending 8 bucks on it? Not at all.

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The g/f brought this home last night; she'd just gotten an iPhone a week ago, and swears this is the only app she'll ever pay for.

It really didn't look as broken as this makes it out to be. It looks frustrating, but playable. Of course, she usually only plays the eternal modes. Maybe it's the timed modes that are broken.

Still, the point is that this is $8. If all you get is the working eternal modes on a bus ride to work, I think that's worth it.

My $.02.

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You prefer pressing touchscreen buttons over real buttons?

And if running homebrew was what you wanted, you might as well have gotten a PSP bud. Better bang for your buck.

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oh well.

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Yeah, I guess so, I can easily see the portability because of the size being awesome.

But I was playing around with the emu's the other day and the lack of a real button to press has made me throw mario into quite a few holes. Maybe I just havent gotten used to it yet?

Still, I can see the button thing being completely irrelevant on rpgs, making it awesome.

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I don't know, seems pretty complete to me.

If there's not much to write about, forcing it to be bigger is just adding fluff.

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[kotaku.com]

[kotaku.com]

Maybe it's just portables...

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Of course, feedback on this format is more than welcome. If everyone thinks it's the devil, we'll take a look at tweaking micro-reviews.

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btw i HATE the condensed layout! who thought of that? fire them.

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