I use to review games years ago, if FORCED to reveiw DG in it's current condition (regaurdless of who/why/how it happened), I would have given it 6.5 also.  But I would have quit rather than release the review "before" the schedule release date of the game itself.  I would have checked out the game again the day after it's release date, and THEN put out a final review (also mentioning the pre-release monkey-wrench to readers).  I think that's what GS should do in this very unique situation, put out another reveiw in a couple days to give SD some leeway for the pre-release fiasco that was not their fault.

If you can't get online to work for you, try Lan if possible.  It worked perfectly for us, and I give the current Lan part of the game a review of 9

As someone said earlier, why are pirate versions able to flood the server at all? Shouldn't access be login based? Or are you saying that all of them trying to hit the server denies it to everyone else??

Actually, I already posted a comment on the gamespot video review requesting that they re-review the game at least a week from now.

Funny that we had the same thought

It's true, a game should be finished when released - however when you're bringing in thousands of potential online users, there IS an unknown element to it. If it's an offline game you know things like latency and matchmaking just arent an issue. But an online service, while it should have been extensively tested, there is always potential for an unknown element - such as Demigods release.

It's not right to blame Gamespot, but at the same time Gamespot should have more sense than to review when there's clearly unknown elements

I don't know if exactly that is a fair review... Just because they basing it on a problem and not the actual game itself.

I mean, look at some of the reviews they put up for games that literally sucked balls, but they were sequels, series, big names, etc...

Granted right now the game is borderline unplayable in Pantheon... But when you get a game that actually works it's fun as hell.

I mean they rated bug ridden games, that have recently come out extremely high, yet this games bugs besides MP, are very few...

I think alot of reviewing is agenda based and what not... I mean ETW, sucked imo... Game was buggy as high hell.

They didn't rate DoW2 on it's MP... Which if anyone played it realized what a joke the matchmaking was. NOT TO MENTION the crap with the patches because of how many times they have to get cert'd through GFWL... I mean they had 1 patch in 1.5months before the recent one and I'm not sure they have even realized it yet. Or the bullcrap about DLC which in turn we learned they would charge for...

I can say with certainty that there's nothing nefarious about Gamespot's review. Gamespot is an honest game site in my experience.

My objection is that a transient issue was allowed to affect the review.  In my opinion, the review should first determine whether an issue is transient or not. 

If we're still talking about massive connection issues next week, then I would agree that there's a serious problem just like when a game comes out buggy and takes weeks to fix.

But when we're talking about the very first day of release and the game's problems are server related and not game related (and yes, I understand that the game experience cannot be decoupled) I think prudence is in order.

owa if the connectivity issues were solely poor coding on stardocks behalf i'd be inthe same boat as you

however you gotta realize their NAT servers at launch were made to handle pre order purchasers + a margin for retail buyers

What happened is around 18k retail people logged on and a whopping 120K warez users were competing for the same space

Now this is a developer nightmare is it not? more than 10 times the number predicted, this caused most of the connectivity problems and stardock needs just 24-48 hours to expand its system while providing updates that block warez users and fix some connectivity issues.. which is what it is doing!

It doesnt help gamestop released the game on friday, when its supposed to be released 5 days later. What makes it worse is it wasnt just any friday, but easter. How would you like if your boss called you in for work on easter weekend?

Now all the gamespot reviewer had to do was either post a review without taking into account these connectivity issues or wait a day or two and rate the game in its state when these are ironed out.

Instead he posted a review heavily effected by connectivity issues we are presently having, and whats funny is that, like someone else pointed out, this is the same reviewer that reviewed Age of Conan, Warhammer Online and Mines of Moria and gave them all 8.5! Now i was personally affected by the launch of Warhammer and AOC and it was a lot more terrible than the problems we are having now, trust me. The connectivity issues however did not affect the reviewers score and in that lies the bias.. its inconsistent, unprofessional and if i was to review and reviewers work i'd give the vessel head who wrote DG's review a 2/10

"120K warez users were competing for the same space"

I dont understand this at all, you need a cdkey to play online how are 120k pirates even able to login to tie up stuff? unless they forgot the filter to stop them from trying to login in.

"Are the options really either 12 hours from street date versus 2 weeks?

What about say, 48 hours from release? Would that be too much?"

i can live with 48 hours, but any review done before that is fair IMO since the game does not work as it should.

Frog dont take it to person  i am just sick of all the games being shiped anymore unfinish and untested been lied to so many times by devs as well.

Now with that said Demigod is one hell of a fun game was late for work tonight playing  a 1h and 30m game lol

Well, since the problem since to have 140 k people accessing the game, I don't really know how they could have tested that before shipping the game.

Sadly, quite spot on review. They judge the game compared to what has already been released and Demigod is very lacking in some parts.

I had high hopes in the game, but I'm disapointed by the connectivity issues and it's NOT worth 40$ digital purchase, sorry. It's 25$ MAX for the features we have available.

Battleforge has so far been vastly superior, especially now that its economy is running fine and you don't need to use real money to get cards anymore.

I might come back to Demigod when issues are resolved in a few weeks, but until then, it's not worth my time.

Good luck to the fans.

LOL Battleforge was a heap of shit, it was generic RTS number #3,853,928 with a slightly new twist of using a trading cards system.

I think it's a shame Gamespot reviewed Demigod like this, and I find it slightly dodgy, despite what Frogboy says.  I have known them to postpone reviews because of release issues in the past, I believe they even did it for SOCOM Confrontation and that has never been fixed.

It's a shame because a review on a big site like that will affect sales a lot.  Will Gamespot really be happy about their 6.5 score if all these issues get ironed out?  Personally I pay little head to Gamespots reviews, I just try to get information from them.  Every time EA releases another C&C clone with new graphics and porn stars in cut scenes it gets at least an 8.0 and I can't play that kind of game more than 5 minutes without being beyond bored.

A video game is not a pizza. You don't consume it once. You play it over a period of time, and if it's a good game with a good developer, they improve it over time. Stardock have shown themselves again and again to do an outstanding job of supporitng their games, fixing problems, improving gameplay and adding content.

However, if it's a pizza analogy you like: the Demigod release was more like, you ordered two pizzas for your living room LAN party. You've hosted LAN parties before, and you know how many people you need to feed. This time, though, 100 people show up. Then they start complaining that there's nothing to eat, and that there aren't enough network connections for all of them. Then the local newspaper comes out with a headline that says "Marshial Does Horrible Job Hosting LAN Party", subtitled "Starving players can't connect or play".

   Life is just not fair when it comes to impression, the first is often the last impression. Lucky for Stardock if they get their multiplayer working properly and scaled correctly perhaps they can convince them to do a re-scoring.