Global Agenda Review Pulled

Ah, I love it when Gamespot has another "Kane and Lynch"

@JusticeCovert Yes, it did. If by guessing you mean, copied any part of it and used a search engine. Also, I did not say I believed any part of it. I was just using a synopsis (as biased as it may have been) of the incedent as a point of reference to demonstrate to previous posters how their logic was flawed.

With all due respect, I lol at the people who expected this game to get a significantly higher score after it was re-reviewed. The fact is, the original reviewer probably found the game so uninteresting that he couldn't keep playing. I've felt the same way with many games - I don't blame him for wanting to walk away. That doesn't, however, change the fact that he did walk away from his job, while I am just walking away from a hobby.

Replacement review from Chris Watters (not the original reviewer) is now live. It's a better and more thorough review but, as you'll see, his score ended up being in line with the one we awarded originally. Sorry it took so long guys, but as I'm sure you're aware, Chris has had other assignments on his plate as well. @scuffpuppy: It's 2010, having worked in this industry for over 15 years is nothing special at this point. Nor is using an anonymous account to slight our reviews team. @AC_pilot: Just FYI, I don't believe Jason Ocampo's leaving had anything to do with Gerstmann's leaving. I'm guessing that stuff came from Wikipedia.

@pungaspot: Although the stats showed only six hours, the reviewer actually played for something like 10-15. The game only counts time spent in missions, not any of the time spent upgrading your character, visiting the auction house, looking for groups etc. Clearly we still felt that the reviewer hadn't spent long enough with the game on this occasion, but in fairness to him the situation wasn't nearly as bad as it looked.

It's good that Gamespot held it's hand up for this, but still, would a review of a major AAA game from a major publisher like this ever get to be published, in order to be pulled? I think not.

I think they aren't gonna waste anymore time on the PoS game. Seeing that its been over a month since they reviewed it first and said another review was on its way, I think they stopped playing.

Ahahaha, the reviewer has to suffer another 40 hours before he can review the game. This game must be just awful

Hmmm.. Seems like the reviewer got tired of the game. Like they really found it a chore to play. Kinda makes you think twice about landing that dream job as a games reviewer/journalist. Not to slam the reviewer or anything. Just seems like we all have those times when our job is just plain annoying. Next time try staying logged in to the server longer.

Hi, I know it's not relevant to the topic at hand, but any updates on the Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver review(s)?

@ladiesman 17: People like you disgust me. And you know why? Cause people like you are the mainstream gamer that killed the creativity of game designers. You are no real gamer, you have no clue what you talk about, you only started to play games cause it was cool. About 10 years ago gaming was concidert a nerd thing, than ps2 and xbox came and suddenly everyone called themselfs a gamer and began to demand that games where short and easy to play instead of creative products where you had to do something to complete it. So go back to your fifa 9829 and other easy rip offs. Global agenda won't win the price for best game thats a fact, but its no blizzard, blizzards has miljards to spend on game making, GA by far doesn't has that budget, are you that stupid to realise that? Ever heard of indy games? They are made by small companies or even by one person only and there are jewels ammong them that fake gamers (mainstream) won't apreciate cause all you care for a fancy graphics and big budget games that make your weener go hard. Global Agenda atleast tries to be different than the so maniest fantasy MMORPG. And they did a pretty good job seeing i enjoyed it for a longer time than i enjoyed a Lord of the Rings online.

Well done, Mr. Calvert and Gamespot. Pulling the review and - maybe more importantly - clearly stating the reasons in a prominently-placed article show an intention to serve your readers with good information. To me, that kind of integrity does more than a thousand "hot screenshots" to keep me coming back to this site.

Whoever posted the review too early, don't worry, everybody makes mistakes. At least you guys solved the problem by pulling the review and coming out honestly saying that you made a mistake and you'll fix it. Credit to you guys.

In other words. Someone just got fired.

And to top it off stop flooding my email with stupid spam GLOBAL piggs, i never signed up for anything!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

who ever wrote this "blogg" crying about how people trash your worthless game should get a golden bottle, with a golden nugget, Clearely showing us how even the lowest players paying customer is being treated, GLOBAL AGENDA will fail and i will be there with the beer lmao at you

Who was the person that did the initial review? I ask because I can count on one hand the number of times Gamespot has had to revise reviews after the fact lately. Anyone remember the RTS review they had to revise after site users brought up a bunch of good points?

Way to go Gamespot. You did the right thing pulling the review. HOWEVER! You did the wrong thing posting the review in the first place!!!!! Six hours? This site has lost all credibility with me. Awful.

@ Ladiesman Blizzard and Bioware are both huge companies with huge budgets. The developer of Global Agenda is a startup that is trying to make a different kind of game. I bought it...enjoyed it for a few weeks...and have since lost interest...but I will say the game isnt half bad. The TPS aspect is actually quite fun. The biggest complaint by people is the AvA aspect lacks content at this point. They worked on it for a few years and they are proud of what they were able to accomplish for their first go around. Every company has to start somewhere. They all cant be as polished from the start as blizzard or bioware.

In 1 year there are 1000 games have been released, the competition is very tight.. Why they (Publishers) don't want to admit that their game sucks, if they want to make a good game, create a high-standard like Blizzard, Bioware, Crytek, Id, etc. if the product isn't ready for release, then...don't ever released!!! you make a hole for yourself, and blaming others for your mistakes!!

Good for Gamespot for doing the right thing and pulling the review. A game should be reviewed either upon completion or after a reasonable period played online in the case of a MMO or Open ended online game. However, Its not like Gamespots 5.5 was that far off the mark, Ace gave it s 5.6 and Eurogamer a 6.0. This does however raise a more interesting question as to how long reviewers for Gamespot play a game before its reviewed?

@ those of you comparing this to Kane and Lynch Jeff Gerstmann, Editorial Director of the site, was fired on November 28, 2007. Immediately after his termination, rumors circulated proclaiming his dismissal was a result of external pressure from Eidos Interactive, the publisher of Kane & Lynch: Dead Men, which had purchased a considerable amount of advertising space on GameSpot's web site. Gerstmann had previously given Kane & Lynch a fair or undesirable rating along with critique. Both Gamespot and parent company CNET stated that his dismissal was unrelated to the review, but due to corporate and legal constraints cannot reveal the reason. A month after Gerstmann's termination, freelance reviewer Frank Provo left GameSpot after eight years stating that "I believe CNET management let Jeff go for all the wrong reasons. I believe CNET intends to soften the site's tone and push for higher scores to make advertisers happy." GameSpot staffers Alex Navarro, Jason Ocampo, Ryan Davis, Brad Shoemaker, and Vinny Caravella also left as a result of Gerstmann's termination. Davis, Shoemaker and Caravella all subsequently joined Gerstmann on his subsequent project, Giant Bomb, while Navarro became the community manager at Harmonix. Ocampo joined the IGN PC Team. Now as far as I know Hi - Res Studio has purchased zero advertising space on Gamespot, so why would they pull it for that reason? Use common sense.

There was that review of Savage way back when. Same kind of thing happened. Gamespot posted a review with a poor score, the devs checked the server logs and found that the reviewer had spent around two hours playing the game. Obviously, two hours is more than enough time to formulate an initial impression of a game, but initial impressions can be deceiving. It's up to the reviewers, after all, to press on through to find out whether the proverbial carrot is eventually lowered into the waiting gamer's grasp, to inform those same gamers of what reward awaits beyond the monotony of the "early game experience," if it does, in fact, exist.

@scuffpuppy Definition of scandal: disgraceful gossip about the private lives of other people; a disgraceful event. What other review scandal are you talking about? Kane and Lynch? That was a marketing/bribery scandal, not a "fair reviewing process" scandal. Two totally different things, not to mention they're like a year apart. Global agenda isn't even that important, nor was Kane and Lynch. It's not like there was anything farfetched about the review except for the fact that they hadn't played for longer than 6 hours, which is fairly long as far as core gameplay mechanics are concerned. All I'm saying is, definitely not a 'scandal', more like the publishers wanted the reviewer to give the game more of a chance than he/she did.

@Rasgueado: really bad choice of comparison. It just doesn't make sense to compare an MMO to one of the shortest games released this year.

I personally am having a lot of fun with the game. People need to realize this isn't a traditional shooter so do not play it as if it is. The game has a ton of potential and the developers are actually listening to the community and adding some really good content this month.

i like you, gamespot. your honesty astounds me.

6.5 hours is a long time. It's longer than I spent playing through the single player campaign of Modern Warfare 2. If your game isn't fun after 6 hours, you've made a crap game.

What a surprise. Gamespot involved in "another" flawed review scandal. What little credibility you had left has just vanished. I've worked in the games industry for over 15 years and can honestly say your site doesn't even register on our horizon. And from a publishing house, that's not good.

The saddest part is that even with the pulled review, scoring Global Agenda 5.5 is lenient in my eyes. I made the mistake of pre-ordering the game and am now stuck with this garbage multiplayer shooter that underwhelms on all accounts.

Wow six hours into a MMO and they reviewed? I can spend a hour just in character creation haha.

Need to stick to review standards plain and simple.

A) Do we know what kind of time was spent beyond what was seen on that page? Any evidence of beta play or other accounts or anything? B) Where do you draw the line with the "30 hours" policy? Crafting and a city hub makes any game an MMO? Everything said in the interview was spot on, regardless of truth. I suppose there's a degree of accountability and 'keeping up with appearances' that needs to go on, but I certainly wouldn't invalidate the review.

Ouch...someone's in trouble :P (seriously, be lenient on the dude, GS!). Well, you have to respect a site that's at least honest and open about these sorts of things. Besides, I was kind of looking to pick up this game, and a brand new review might make me get it/avoid it.

damn, someones in trouble

Is this a Kayne and Lynch incident again?

why not just say "the game was so bad that even though gamespot reviewers are supposed to spend 30hrs to review I could only tolerate 6hrs before I removed this abomination from my hard drive"????? problem solved imho!

I still luv you Calvert. The game is poop I can understand.

I seriously doubt it makes any kind of difference in the review score... But I guess we'll see.

While I don't expect a great review for this game (personally I love it, but a lot of the games I play have low scores) I really don't think this review is an isolated case. We can see the metrics (Time in game, classes played, matches won/lost, etc) of the players in this game, its publicly viewable. I wonder how many other reviews would be pulled if we could see the metrics of the players... What I don't get is why this game got so shortchanged while others get multiple entries in the review blog, etc... like star trek, as mentioned, which I feel is a much much worse game.

This isn't anything new. I'm sure reviewers from every publication and website do this sort of thing. It just so happens that this time, they got caught with their pants down. That doesn't make it acceptable, but just saying you'd have to be pretty naive to believe this is an isolated incident.

Unprofessional as usual

The old review was correct though. The game does pretty much shows all its got in 6 hours. Its a shallow blend of all these ideas that just comes out flavorless. The game is alright for $30. But there is very little depth.

Gerstmann gate much?

no Global Agenda sucked badly. He can change the review but that score should barely change

These reviewers dont play enough of the game their reviewing not just GS but 99% of them do this. Really, how can you review a game without finishing it or making through at least 80% which they do not. I know it takes time to play some games especially an MMO but hey, if their going to review games and be honest then they need to practice what they preach and eithe rspend more time doing so or hire more people to just review games, hey Im avaliable.

Glad that GS was honest and up front about the error. Unfortunately I think many users would have liked a re-review of AvP instead. :)

Hmm he pretty much nailed the review on the spot. I would of been a bit more lenient myself, but oh well. Good to see their going to get a bit more out of the game before the review is really done.

That's good. No matter the game, it should be given a chance by the reviewer.