Thank you so much for not using ‘pressurised’.
While the initial (and stated) reason for them is to avoid rushed reviews, it rather strains belief that the embargo end date always just happens to be right at launch if there’s no element of hiding review scores from pre-orders. Not that I think this is bad practice.
Why? That gives reviewers the most time possible to spend with the game. It only matters to people that are desperate to get pre-order bonuses, and even then usually the review embargo lifts hours before launch, so anyone chomping at the bit for a review still has some time to decide even then. If a review embargo is ever like a week after launch, that would indeed be strange.
That just feels like an attempt from the games companies to justify it. There’s no good reason they can’t send the game to the reviewers a day earlier and then set the embargo date a day earlier. I’m certain this would be the norm if it were accepted wisdom that reviews dropping a day before launch was the ideal way to maximise revenue.
That doesn’t seem to happen though, so there are presumably business reasons for wanting reviews coming out right at launch. I can only speculate on what these are, but an obvious (and valid) one is not wanting cancelled pre-orders if the reviews are bad. Perhaps that’s not really a factor; perhaps it’s felt that today’s world of instant gratification means that people want to be able to play a game as soon as they read a glowing review.
Seems like publishers favor giving popular streamers early access to games rather than allowing early reviews. I’m guessing this is a pretty effective marketing strategy.
Steam tells me this unlocks in 13 hours. I.E. tomorrow for me.
The developer is streaming right now on the store page on Steam, also. They’ve handed out plenty of streamer/YouTube copies to people.
I’ve noticed that as a whole we have a lot less pre-release reviews in gaming in general the last few years. Maybe this is a thing now.
From what I’ve seen of it, I sincerely doubt it’s ‘bad’.
Especially since the streams are often formally marketing, including bars on negative commentary. Unlike reviews (give or take a Gerstmann incident).
Could also be that this is a pretty niche title as well. Like how many popular streamers would have even been alive for Theme Hospital and Bullfrog?
Watching some videos, other than chrome, I really don’t see any reason to get this as long as Theme Hospital is still available.
I hope this isn’t true. If they polish a few things, provide a modern interface and just add a bit more it must be worthwhile.
Wait wait, what if the bits they add are really annoying cutscenes or whatever it is millenials like these days!
Hopefully… not.
This sounds rather good:
That’s good enough for me. I’m in. Just hope that other game doesn’t end up better, but there are worse things that could happen.
I NEED THIS
I just bought it, good reviews and 25% off at Fanatical, was too hard to pass up on. :)
Fanatical showing 20% discount to me. Still a good offer.
Gotta sign up for the newsletter, they send out special promotions that way! ;)
I hope you can mod this, I am picturing “HMO Hell”, the mod where you play as the patient.
Maybe also “Quality Metrics” where you navigate legal and contractal checkpoints for more profit and bullshit work.