Fallout 3 Review Peripherals

Let’s talk a bit about some news stories peripheral to the tides of Fallout 3 reviews waving about. Pete Hines chats with Edge Online about pre-review score jitters.

“We’re never really sure how these [reviews] will turn out,” Bethesda PR boss Pete Hines told Edge in an e-mail. “So in general, we’re always nervous/anxious.

“Obviously, we had some early indications from folks that played the game first for print magazines here and in Europe. The 10 out of 10 from Official Xbox Magazine here in the U.S. gave us an indication that at least somebody really liked it.

And Neocrisis is running a story about IGN ninja-editing its PS3 review.

Before: “Fallout 3 is such an engaging and fantastic experience that it’s easy to overlook its few minor flaws, but they do exist and should be mentioned. With any game of this size and scope, you can likely expect a few bugs to slip through the testing process and that is the case here. I had the game crash a couple times. I, and other editors at IGN, have also experienced an annoying number of bugs on the PS3 version that have prevented the game from progressing or have broken the world. In all of these cases, reloading the game has been enough to fix the errors and nothing was frustrating or detrimental enough to give me thought of not recommending the game. However, there is one major issue with the PS3 version that can’t be fixed with a reset. Every time anybody on your friends list signs on or sends you a message (or any time you receive any network notification), the game freezes and the screen blurs for a few seconds. If you have a lot of friends signing on and off all day, this will completely ruin the game. The only way to circumvent this is to either play offline or turn off notifications entirely.”

After: “Fallout 3 is such an engaging and fantastic experience that it’s easy to overlook its few minor flaws, but they do exist and should be mentioned. With any game of this size and scope, you can likely expect a few bugs to slip through the testing process and that is the case here. I had the game crash a couple times, amongst other small bugs. In all of these cases, reloading the game has been enough to fix the errors and nothing was frustrating or detrimental enough to make me not recommend the game.”

Thanks, Kotaku.